OP-EDS
Kevin Rennie: The state shouldn’t spend $1.5 million to study Hartford’s Brainard Airport
By Kevin Rennie Hartford Courant
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Apr 15, 2022 at 5:15 pm
Hartford leaders and others want to get their mitts on Brainard Airport again. Their designs provide a reminder of the resilience of bad ideas in Connecticut government.
Brainard quietly plays an important role in the region’s economy. The 200 acres on which thousands of smaller planes arrive and depart each year have been an irresistible target for politicians, developers and assorted others. A bill making its way through the legislature provides $1.5 million for “an analysis of the avenues to maximize the value of certain state-owned real property.”
The property is Brainard, and it has been studied before. In 2016, the legislature’s bipartisan Program Review and Investigations Committee determined the airport plays an important role in the region’s economy. Closing it would extract a high price.
The region’s largest companies, the 2016 study found, routinely use Brainard for their own requirements and those they do business with. A small airport close to downtown Hartford is an important advantage for a region that needs more of them, not fewer.
Smaller businesses also rely on Brainard. Some area businesses have customers that require the immediate presence of a skilled employee. Commercial flights from Bradley International Airport to many parts of the nation require long layovers and are expensive when booked at the last minute. It is, businesses told legislative staffers, considerably less expensive to use a small private plane from Brainard.
Six years ago, staff at the Connecticut Convention Center believed “the presence of Brainard helps them obtain [corporate] events. They estimated that if Brainard closed, about one-quarter of their executive meeting business would evaporate.” Brainard quietly serves an important purpose in sustaining and growing the region’s economy.
The Metropolitan District Commission in 2006 proposed a mixed-use development of the property. It dreamed of developing a marina (the land is by the Connecticut River), walking paths, housing and commercial space. The MDC is an agency that provides water and/or sewage services to 12 towns in the region. It is not a real estate developer but finds it impossible to stick to its precise lane.
It’s at it again. Hartford City Council member James Sanchez is employed by the MDC. He is aggrieved that Brainard, a state-owned airport, does not pay property taxes to Hartford.
Sanchez wrote in the Hartford Business Journal in March that the estimated $2.2 million in taxes Brainard would produce without an exemption “could be invested into meaningful programs to help break the cycle of generational and systemic poverty that persists in Hartford.” The airport does make a meaningful contribution to the economy. It is unfair to imply that Brainard is an obstacle to overcoming poverty.
Brainard works. It provides jobs in aviation and is the home of the Connecticut Aero Tech School for Aviation Maintenance Technicians. Stop trying to bulldoze it.
Downtown property owners and business operators do not need government sponsored competition 2 miles away. Enough with the wish casting. U.S. Rep. John Larson seems to be the only elected official who understands the urgent need to repair the 80-year-old system of dikes along the Connecticut River that protects us from catastrophic floods. Do not spend $1.5 million plumping for an elaborate development on what could become a flood plain until the levees are secure.
We know Hartford leaders have long been suckers for colorful architectural drawings. It’s much easier to talk about those than shootings, test scores or the causes of the persistent cycle of poverty.
Stop making the obvious blunders. Laying the groundwork for closing Brainard and handing it over to developers is as bad an idea as Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration’s catastrophic tampering with the state’s school construction grants program. In October 2019 Lamont’s administration ignored state law and transferred the program from an agency where it had been to one it should have stayed clear of. Highfalutin claims of synergies and efficiencies garnished Lamont’s terrible decision.
Whatever convinced Lamont to support the bureaucratic move, others who knew better issued warnings and stated their objections. Lamont has scrambled to ignore the mess he oversaw and claim credit for undoing his folly. He could avoid that by stopping the Brainard bill with a veto if the legislature approves it.
Kevin Rennie of South Windsor is a lawyer and a former Republican state senator and representative.
